The Gillard Government's shambled attempt to legislate for offshore processing of asylum seekers arriving by boat will be debated in the House of Representatives today. On Tuesday night, the Parliament was provided with further evidence of how unprincipled and unworkable is the so-called Malaysia solution, especially when it comes to the removal of unaccompanied minors from Australia.
The Report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee on Australia's arrangement with Malaysia in relation to asylum seekers was tabled in the Senate. Not surprisingly, the Coalition and Green senators on the committee slammed the proposed arrangement. But trying to defend it, the Government senators decided to take aim at the Commonwealth ombudsman who oversees immigration decisions made by Commonwealth public servants on Australian soil.
Labor Senator Trish Crossin told the Senate she thought the ombudsman 'performed significantly unprofessionally during the course of this inquiry'. She did 'not believe that the evidence the ombudsman gave before the Committee was at all credible or well sourced and documented'. When governments start shooting their own officials you have to be concerned.
Central to the Malaysian arrangement is the need for Commonwealth public servants to make pre-removal assessments of vulnerable individuals who ought not be removed off-shore. Government senators noted that the Department of Immigration and Citizenship 'indicated that in relation to children, a 'best interests of the child' assessment would be undertaken in the pre-removal assessment process, thus meeting Australia's obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child'.
The Department has drawn up pre-removal guidelines for the assessment of all boat arrivals to ensure 'the non-refoulement of a potential transferee where that person fears persecution in Malaysia; the identification of vulnerabilities and heightened risks, particularly focusing on unaccompanied children; and fitness to travel'.
But these guidelines were not included in the paperwork accompanying the arrangement between Australia and Malaysia signed on 25 July 2011. They were not available to the ombudsman before the parliamentary inquiry, despite a request for same. They were not included in the Department's submission to the parliamentary inquiry. They were not made available to the parliamentary committee until a week after its hearings concluded.
Liberal Senator Gary Humphries who chaired the Committee told the Senate, 'The Committee was deeply disturbed by the absence of that information. The question of what those guidelines say remains a very open question for the Senate as a whole.'
The guidelines state:
Unaccompanied minors are